Basic Food Prices Skyrocket; Bush, Righties Say Economic Pessimism Tied to Iraq

Posted by Joshua Holland at 12:01 PM on August 16, 2007.

As if I weren't enough of a pain in the ass with my constant pitches to sign up for my Iraq newsletter, now I've gone and launched a second one centered on our Corporate Accountability and Workplace special coverage. You can sign up here to get it all delivered to your inbox each week.

And just as I do with our Iraq special coverage, I'll be pumping much more content into Corporate Accountability and Workplace than we can fit on the front page.

I want to highlight one of those special coverage pieces. It's a McClatchy article about how prices for common foodstuffs have skyrocketed recently, with the costs of basics like milk, eggs and frozen juice up by double-digits in the last 12 months …

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Regular readers know that I'm fascinated by the yawning divide that exists between the economy that the commercial media presents on the TV each night and the one most of us live in, and these data speak to that gap like few do.

Most Americans are extremely pessimistic about the economy right now, and the Bushies and the rest of the right-wing noise machine have been pushing an extraordinarily silly narrative to explain why that is. They point out that stock prices are strong and unemployment low and say that any rain on our national economic parade must be a result of the quagmire in Iraq (of course, they also say things are going swimmingly in Iraq, but I think the time for expecting logical consistency from this crew has passed). According to this line of intellectual contortionism, people are so unhappy about how things are going over in Baghdad that they've developed a generally pessimistic worldview that blinds them to the wonders of the American economy. Because of the bad news out of Iraq, Americans don't find their puppies as cute as they used to, even fresh hot pizza tastes like crap and despite the fact that average working people are doing great, they're gloomy about a go-go American economy that they should all be celebrating.

Or something like that.

Of course, Occam is spinning in his grave: in the real world, Americans have a negative view of the economy because wages haven't kept pace with inflation for most of them over the past six years. They don't see any great gains from a rising stock market, they just see that they're working as hard as ever and the money they take home buys less. (The debt crisis looming overhead doesn't help people's moods, especially those who've taken out piggy-back and teaser loans or super-low-equity mortgages in recent years.)

And where do most ordinary people see that dollar shrinking most clearly? At the gas pumps and in the grocery check-out line. You may get an electricity bill once a month, but most people shop for food and fill up the tank weekly.

The flip side of that is that these kinds of real-world economic indicators -- the ones that are so important to working families -- don't even register as a blip on the radar screens of most of the people who are writing about and reporting on the economy. They are, as a group, in the comfort zone of the middle-class. Which is to say that while they're not, as a whole, rich, they also aren't in a place where it matters if a gallon of milk costs $3.80, as it did in July, or the $3.30 it went for at the beginning of the year.

Therein lies the gap between the economics we're indoctrinated with every time we crack the newspaper and the humanomics we experience every day.

That's just one of the stories in our special coverage area. Here are some of the other fine pieces this week that I couldn't squeeze onto the front page:

Raising the Minimum Wage: Don't Stop Now! Dick Meister: It's awfully tough to live on $5.85 an hour.

GM Paying Off Talk Radio Hosts Ralph Nader: Is Detroit involved in corporate pay-ola for radio talkers?

The Tax Collector Cometh Christopher Brauchli: Can out-sourced tax collection survive the Democrat-controlled Congress?

Who Should Pay for Infrastructure Repair: Fat-Cat Tax Cheats or Working Americans? Paul Buchheit: After years of letting the wealthy off the hook, some lawmakers are now turning to American workers to foot the bill for repairing the nation's frayed infrastructure.

Strange Bedfellows: Greenpeace Joins Loggers to Stop Illegal Wood Imports Jim Snyder: Greenpeace has linked arms with its usual foe to support a bill giving the Justice Department new powers to stop the importation of illegally harvested wood.

The "American Dream" Falters for Second Generation Immigrants Peter Grier, Bina Venkataraman: While the debate over "illegal" immigration rages, hard-working second-generation immigrants' financial progress slows.

Prices for Key Foods are Rising Sharply; Half of Eligible Poor Don't Get Food Stamps Kevin Hall, Rob Hotakainen: Already stung by a two-year rise in gasoline prices, American consumers now face sharply higher prices for foods they can't do without. At the same time, half of the nation's eligible poor aren't getting the food stamps to which they're entitled.

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Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.